Momument. London. Jan. 10.
A doric column built to commemerate the tragedy of the Great Fire of 1666. The doric column was drawn from various ideas born of the fruitful imagination of Britain's very own Baroque polymath powerhouse: Sir Christopher Wren. Built in 1677 it contains within its construction a wonderful riposte to Venturi's monument.
Monument via here, via Venturi / Denise Scott Brown.
Venturi declared that the best, and most efficient, monument is one that houses programme in a dumb box, and has a giant sign atop it declaring: "I am a monument".
Wren's column, is a tower whose height is equal to its distance from the fire. It is a landmark in two senses: navigational and symbolic. His column is not purely decorational, it is an observation tower for the curious. Ackroyd tells us it was a favourite to those tired with London, hurling themselves from its height.
Most importantly Wren was a president of the Royal Society and a keen astronomer. The monument represents their experimentation together: it is was intended as a Zenith telescope, as well as a device for various other expirements. To this end the cantilevered spiral stair spirals around a void that terminates at the bottom end in a minute laboratory, and at the top end at the hinged top of the crowning urn, and beyond, the heavens.
This symbiotic relationship between landmark/monument and instrument/observation (a duck? - no, a camoflauge duck - an exact and precise building, ornamented to serve several functions) makes this building a wonderful piece of architecture. It is a building to progress human and scientific endevaour, to conquer natural distasters, and to kickstart a modern London. Wren was already envisaging a complexity of construction that was post-post-modern in the 17th Century. I think it's about time we caught on.
Base of the Monument - tiny entrance. London. Jan. 10.
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